FBI agents late Tuesday night raided the West Palm Beach business of an eye doctor suspected of providing free trips and even underage Dominican Republic prostitutes to U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. -- who has denied what he calls the "fallacious allegations."

Amid the suspicious circumstances of the complaints, Democrats have tried to characterize the reports about Menendez and Melgen as a right-wing smear job.Oh yes, obviously a smear! Now if he were a Rethuglican...
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid refused to comment on the possibility of an FBI investigation when he was asked Tuesday about the case.

Said Reid: "Always consider the source. All anyone here has to look at is the source where this comes from."

Tuesday night's raid, however, shows that there is at least an investigation tied to Menendez's longtime friend and ally.

In response to the news today that the economy contracted -.1 percent in the final quarter of last year, Democrats are touting the claim that this is "the best-looking contraction in U.S. GDP you'll ever see."

Seriously? Wow. Nothing more need be said, then, while we sit back and admire for a while.

The claim was originally made by chief U.S. economist for Capital Economics Paul Ashworth.

"The drag from defense spending and inventories is a one-off. The rest of the report is all encouraging," Ashworth also claimed.

The claim was quickly seized upon by Democrats,

...organized by Journolist and Media Matters...

looking to share good news about a contracting economy.

Because the good news isn't apparent?

Democratic party communications director Brad Woodhouse quickly began spreading the word on Twitter:

Never get in the way of your opponents shooting themselves in the kneecaps.

[CNBC] The story of bankrupt, increasingly impoverished, reliably Democrat, Detroit... ruled by Democrats since 1962...'s decline is decades old: Its tax revenue and population have shrunk and labor costs have remained out of whack. But the city's budget problems have deepened to such an extent that it could run out of cash in a matter of weeks or months and ultimately be forced into what would be the largest-ever Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy filing in the United States.

Frustrated by the lack of concrete progress, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, last month appointed a team to scour the city's books. The audit could result in a state takeover of Detroit's finances through the appointment of an emergency financial manager. Such a manager, who would seize control of the city's checkbook, could then propose federal bankruptcy court as the best option.

Snyder, who has called the situation "a crisis in terms of financial affairs," said the team would deliver its report in February.

"Detroit is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy after the City Council has failed to make the necessary cuts to deal with having a smaller population," said Rick Jones, chairman of the Republican majority caucus in the state Senate.

Jones, who has indicated he does not favor a bankruptcy, said he would like to see an emergency manager installed to fix the city's problems. If that failed, there would be a case for finding a way to shrink the Detroit municipal area, he argued.

Detroit's population is now just over 700,000 - down 30 percent since 1990 - but the city still has to provide services to an area encompassing more land than the Socialist paradise of San Francisco,...where God struck dead Anton Lavey, home of the Sydney Ducks, ruled by Vigilance Committee from 1859 through 1867, reliably and volubly Democrat since 1964... Boston and the borough of Manhattan.

While Democratic Mayor Dave Bing and the Detroit City Council have moved to reduce spending and initiate some reforms to stave off a takeover, including layoffs and wage and benefit cuts, the progress may not be enough for Michigan officials and politicians.

[ROLLCALL] Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., said Monday that so far, he has not counted a single Democratic "no" vote on the question of whether former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel should be confirmed as Defense secretary.

Hagel, whose nomination has drawn fire from his fellow Republicans, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday for his hearing. Though the session with the panel is expected to be testy, Hagel will likely clear that hurdle before facing a 60-vote threshold in the full Senate. But even Republican aides are quietly conceding he is likely to get the three-fifths majority he needs to prevent a filibuster.

"We did whip it. And the numbers were very positive on the Democratic side," Durbin said of a preliminary vote count his office did last week of the Senate Democratic Conference's 55 members.

"I didn't whip the Republican side so I can't say," Durbin continued when asked whether he thought he could pick off at least five Republican votes to get to 60. "I need to do it again this week, but as of last week, we were doing very, very well among Democrats. There were no 'no' votes. There were some who wanted to wait until after his testimony."

The controversy surrounding Hagel has centered comments he made about the "Jewish lobby" and concerns that he may not be pro-Israel enough. Some Republicans have also questioned his stance on engagement with Iran.

#1
No man either alive, dead, or risen is universally liked. Somewhere, someone thinks meanly or less of him; otherwise the tally is a fraud. In Senator Durbin's defense, I am sure he [Durbin] likes dogs, but I have no proof of it.

[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton... sometimes described as The Heroine of Tuzla and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Frederick T. Frelinghuysen ..., while lamenting the partisanship of congressional Republicans who grilled her about the Benghazi attack, encouraged Republicans not to imitate the unwillingness to compromise evinced by forces of Evil in North Africa.

That certainly is an interesting perspective, though not, one would think, terribly diplomatic..

"It has been increasingly partisan," Clinton said today at the Newseum when asked to comment on the questioning she faced from Republicans last week. "You can be partisan, you can have a strong sense of the rightness of your position, but democracy and certainly legislative bodies require compromise. And you can't let compromise become a dirty word because then you veer toward fanaticism."

"I mean, we were just talking about hard boyz who think it's only their way, they are the ones who have the truth, none of the rest of us have any kind of claim on what is real in their views," she continued. "And so it's important in our democracies -- like Australia, like the United States -- that yes, be passionate, be intense about your feelings, but at the end of the day you've got to serve the people who sent you there, and that requires compromise."

The "extremists" Clinton had just been discussing included those that carried out the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, resulting in the deaths of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.

#5
She is making an equivalence between North African terrorists and Republicans? That is deplorable. The Democrats are the ones who are running a government that is rapidly heading towards tyrannical.

[Washington Post] The Senate overwhelmingly approved Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) as the next secretary of state Tuesday afternoon, with three Republican "no" votes.

It's like ripping a Band-Aid off: best to do it quickly...

The vote was 94 to 3, clearing the way for Kerry to formally take over from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton... sometimes described as For a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillary and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Tallyrand ... on Friday.

He assumes the post amid a civil war in Syria that has killed an estimated 60,000, stalled nuclear negotiations with Iran and the spread of militancy across North Africa. U.S. relations with Russia are at a low point, the United States is struggling to manage a changing relationship with a rising China and the prospects for new Mideast peace efforts appear dim.

Three Republicans voted against Kerry -- Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

#1
His predecessor has proven competency is not a requirement of the job.

from the Instaprof -

I believe that this is the first time since at least 2001 that theres no woman or minority on the presidential-succession shortlist: After Obama, its Joe Biden, John Boehner, Patrick Leahy, and John Kerry.

How's that working out for you sis? But, they've got you lined up for the next draft.

A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.